Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Tandem Glass FUNdraiser 2016

We are looking out over our first beautiful snowfall this clear and sunny December morning and feeling blessed and VERY excited for this coming Saturday!!!!!!!

See you This Saturday December 10th! noon-7pm

Here is a list of our artists this year:
Nisa Jewelry
SpiralWorks Felt & Leather
Morphee Creations Hand printed cards, linen and wearables
Tim Christensen Pottery
Christine Peters Jewelry
Nick Rossi Knives, Blacksmith

Music in order of appearance:
Steamboat Gypsy (folk)
Twisted Strings (celtic)
Hannah Daman & The Martelle Sisters (vocals, string instruments, original songwriting).

Of course we will be selling our hand blown glass. Come early for any "moody-artist specials"
We are sponsored by Watershed Tavern
Get Updates & learn more about our event and our artists on Tandem Glass's Event page



Saturday, June 18, 2016

Yay Summer!!!

The flags went up on our barn the first of June. We will be open all but a few days this summer. The gallery got some love and elbow grease as well and is an even better place to see our glass.

We had our usual month of color work this year making the stripes that go into our work, then weaving those stripes into murrini and canne for the mosaic line. It's always such a great month when we focus on just the color: experimenting and coming up with new shades like this years coral peach:
                                                                             
 Some of this years favorite murrini:
















Oxbow and The Watershed Tavern are some of our favorite local spots to get beer. This October we will be part of a statewide Craft tour which includes artist studios and brew pubs.


 We built a wood fired oven last fall out of old studio bricks and refractory. The bricks for the floor came from an old salt fired kiln at our neighbors: Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts and the bricks for the arch came out of our old farmhouse, fired right here in Dresden! They still bear some fingerprints from the folks who made them and a cat's paw print as well.

Monday, June 22, 2015


It was a very snowy winter and cool spring but we are thawed out ! Our flag are up on the barn and the furnace is cooling down. I won't horrify you with pictures of our barn with snow & ice up to the roof line but I will tell you that around January I just left my boots in my snowshoes. Being buried makes staying in the shop and getting lot of work done much easier! We spent almost two months just making color cane and murrini for our work. When it came time to actually blow glass we had a tremendous palette to chose from. These funny little snakes are the trimmed bits from Space Pitchers.



 Many exciting NEW color combinations in the Space Pitchers this year. I always try to hang on to the above trim bits just as a record of what we have made. They are so much fun though I have to throw them into our "mosaic" line..  New shows and galleries. Our web site is constantly being updated so if you cant make it to our showroom then visit our web site to see if we will be near you. We also have a few items on the shopping cart now.


New! "noodle" glasses: Shown here in "butterfly garden" colors. We kept the glass studio lit up and running an extra 3 weeks because kept selling out, and our season hadn't even started. We have very few left and its still just June.


We continue to enlist carpenters, timber framers and structural engineers etc. to discuss our salt box barn with us. It is an amazing salt box timber frame we are proud to have as our shop. 


When life gives you.....eggs?


make chocolate souffle!


We love following the adventures of our fellow craftspeople and in an attempt to reciprocate Terrill has started an instagram account: terrilltandem . Tandem is also on Facebook...Both seem to be an excellent way to share not only commissions and new projects/inspirations but cute animal moments:
as well as the recipe for the above chocolate souffle. Thank You for staying tuned in virtually to our adventures! We hope you'll visit us in real time at our gallery. If you have visited please share your experience with us, or read what others have to say on tripadvisor. Cheers & have a wonderful summer!!!!




Tuesday, November 25, 2014


Happening NOW!
Somehow our third annual studio sale/ fundraiser is happening already! THIS Sat (Nov 29). our first year was good (and fun) our second year was almost 3X as good (and even more fun) so we are trying not to get ahead of ourselves with our hopes and excitement. The beneficiary is again The Good Shepherd Food Bank. You really can't argue with an organization that turns one dollar into 4 meals for folks in need. We are thrilled to have Twisted Strings playing their wonderful Celtic tunes. This year we also have MORE artists:
and of course Tandem Glass
All artists are donating 20% of all sales towards GSFB
Tandem has work that's marked down & all sales online will continue to send 20% to GSFB right up until the New Year. Click here to for Tandem online sales
Thank You Fiddler's Reach! Rob will be donating his This locally produced (yay bees!) mead for the 3rd year in a row. We are big fans and look forward to turning you on the array of what he does. I'm a big fan of his dry mead.  Also up: Funky Bow! This father son team has a great story (including the spinach farmer/mad scientist part). We drink beer in this shop and have really enjoyed what they have got going on here; We are also so thrilled & very thankful to have folks donate their product towards this cause. We Thank you all as well for enthusiasm for our work that makes this possible!!!


Oh, and Terrill is speaking in December ....in front of people in Boston. The Society of Arts and Crafts will be putting on their Holiday show and so in addition to Tandem Glass having a booth Terrill will be showing slides that hopefully elucidate her process. For a coupon to the event stay tuned to tandem's facebook page....

Terrill holding a space pitcher "scrap" meant for mosaic

Friday, October 10, 2014

This Weekend!

Oct 11 & 12
11:00 am - 4:00 pm

                                   A State Wide Craft Tour

This years tour is shaping up to be an awesome event. We have some great neighbors (craft breweries included) who are throwing open their doors. The foliage report  has us just shy of peak season which makes it extra nice timing for hitting the road to see us crafty people in our element. While our studio is down for repairs the gallery is open. Plan your trip by visiting the above link.
Any?'s:  207-737-2781

highly recommended: I'm not even covering everybody close by in the list below,  Botti glass is cheek to jowel with us, literally around the corner, and the others are fantastic not to be missed. Check out the map (link above) to plan your trip. You'll note when you visit a tab in the upper left. click on it and select other venues to get the whole picture of this vast open house tour. We look forward to your visit. Have Fun!!!!
Eben Blaney Furniture
Watershed Ceramics
Botti Glass
swine & stein
Oxbow Brewery
Circle Stones


Monday, July 21, 2014

I absolutely LOVE this pitcher!!!! Off it goes tomorrow to Alabama, sigh. Its so wonderful to see a piece I'm so proud of go to a loving a home. Its almost August and we are having a cool lovely summer. Come see us in the gallery!

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Whoa Summer!



Somehow summer snuck up on us.  I don't know how it happened, but suddenly I looked at our blog and it was waaaaaaaaaay out of date. I thought I'd better post something quick so you still know we are here! Its been a busy winter and we've got some excellent color and designs in glass we've been playing with. Better to show than to tell:


All sorts of fun with color this year. the murrini shown below look so AMAZING blown out in the work! I need to get some photos up of those....and the new bowls & pitchers.....Maybe just come visit our showroom. We are here! As usual chance or appt.

I've been reading/listening to much about creativity, burnout, time, overwork=overwhelmed=overload recently and want to share this great 2 part video with you: Thank You Jennifer Nielson for posting this!

We recently had a friend and client come into our studio who wanted some work cast. We did our usual preamble discussion with them regarding the process and began working. It was a great day in the shop making something experimental, everyone was giddy and had a great time. We were all excited for future work/play in the shop. Then the client saw ....The product. Suddenly everything shifted. Nothing was right and none of it could be used in a commision. We were all of us deeply disappointed and upset. It made us all reevaluate our expectations, our communications...everything! After copiously mentally belaboring the issue (we had emptied a pot full of glass into sand for nothing...glass we could have used to make our work for days with), we took a break from thinking about it and tried to let it go. Usually this is when a clear overarching understanding can be reached. When you detach and sort of space out seeing things with greater perspective. The perspective that came to me was enlightening and I'm deeply thankful for it. The client had liked a color series I've been working on for over a decade. The series was still out on a table and I looked at it and suddenly thought about how many days, how many years I worked to technically learn how to make the piece. I've literally made hundreds of this encalmo vase, again and again week after week, always at my own expense: rented the shop, paid an assistant, sat on the work till it sold or smashed it because it wasn't right. I've spent thousands of dollars researching the colors. We had for a time a glass that melted with a sort of apricot hue and so I made scarlet colored work and stopped making blues (the pinkish tone turned them into something all wrong). Then we switched to a glass years later with a cool clear tone and went back to blues I had been working with.  I stood there staring at 5 of those vases. They look like just 5 vases. You don't even think behind those 5 vases is decades, thousands of dollars, and all the labor which is physically punishing. You just see something that looks simple and clean..light. 
I never think about my work in terms of years and dollars spent. I think 'can I continue to make it now"..I certainly stress when I'm making work about "paying for the day". I know what a day costs me so I can assign a "value" to the piece...and I know sometimes I won't sell the piece for years.  I keep making work. I'm trying to make sometime just a color or an experiment, and i want to keep going because it just gets better (more interesting) My language and understanding of the medium just gets better.
I really hadn't thought about any of that until we had a client who walked into the shop thinking they could just create their vision immediately, and productively and sell it right away. I'm not faulting them for the urgency because that's real life and like I said I punish myself with it too (I'm a terribly impatient student who tends to curse my faculties in a new medium). Really what I'm trying to say is it gave me a moment to look back over how long it did take me to figure out what I'm doing, and.....I was kind of shocked. I'm still kind of shocked. The client gave me a reference point (based in expectation) that showed me where I exist on a time scale. 
In working out how to have good clear communications with clients so that it is a good experience I decided that next time we host a client in our shop and help them make their designs we will tell them that the shop is billed at time, materials and labor. Most importantly we will tell them they are paying us for process and not product.



Saturday, November 23, 2013

Holiday Fundraiser Count Down!!!!




Looking for something fun to do with friends and family the Saturday following Thanksgiving?


We are having an Art throw-down/ benefit for the Good Shepherd Food Bank. We have guest artists Tim Christensen and Nisa Smiley selling their work (if your not familiar be excited, be very excited). Watershed Center for Ceramic arts has loaned us their "mud mobile" and so Tim will be doing throwing demonstrations on the wheel. Charlie Jenkins of course is going to be blowing glass.

Watershed will have some of their ceramics here for sale and 100% of those sales go directly to the Center. All other sales are sending 20% to the Good Shepherd Food Bank. Twisted Strings is playing again this year!!! Great people playing great celtic music. Last year Rob from Fiddler's Reach busted out bagpipes. He's back this year with our friend from fledgling brewery Bear Bones Beer. This brewing duo create some very complicated and new to your palette beers. I havent' even mentioned Gryphon Ridge Spice Co. or  Cara Romano Felted jewelry. In fact there is just a great deal to keep up with this year. Writing the press release was really complicated! Between getting orders our and posting photos of our guest work I haven't even mentioned what weve been up too. oh well,

Here's what you need to know:

While it is the anti-shopping experience you may end up purchasing some super lovely, one of a kind creation for a dear one, and if you use an American Express card you'll get a 10$ statement credit.
Its a potluck! I think Gryphon Ridge is bringing chili (you've been alerted. Her chili has won prizes).

We hope you can join us!!!!


Friday, October 4, 2013

Fall Studio Happenings.......

Fall is one of my favorite times to be in Maine. I just checked the fall foliage report and our area is just getting going, farther North is now nearing peak color. It should be a gorgeous month. It's a terrific time to tour Maine and most exciting for me is the realization of a pet project: an online interactive studio tour map! Part of American Craft Week this tour has over 80 artists opening their doors. We are looking forward to seeing visitors this Saturday, October 5th, and also visiting some of our neighbors many of whom are quite close making it easy to see many artists without traveling far.
Other exciting developments are around our 2nd annual studio fundraiser. Last year our benefit for Maine Craft Association was so successful that we are doing it again. This years benefit goes to the Good Shepherd Food Bank. With over two months lead time Guest artists, and Watershed Ceramic Arts Mud Mobile already lined up we are feeling very inspired.

Friday, August 16, 2013


Recent Etched Glass Work:



It's been a busy summer. Soon we will be lighting up the studio and blowing glass again (call for schedule). In the meantime our gallery is open and we still have some great hand blown glass on the pedestals! As things thin out though and we get ready to apply for next years show there is pressure to finish up any work which is still in the cold shop (The cold shop is were we etch and polish glass). It's a great place to be because it is cool. It is not as exciting as blowing glass, but blowing glass in Maine , in the summer? It's humid! so we adapt. We go to shows (tomorrow Falmouth Me. Audubon Show). From there the list dwindles. it is getting to be that time of the year where we are running low on work and it's time to get back in the studio. We arent' there yet ! so check our show schedule. New this year for us is Laudholm. This year will be our fifth year at the Common Ground Fair....
We hope to catch up with you either here or there!
#handblownglass #glassart #madeinmaine #studiogallery


Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Coming Up Chautauqua New York Craft Alliance show! Besides Craft Boston Holiday this will be our only out of state show this year. Our Gallery in Maine will be open although we aren't blowing glass till November